


Of Apparent Transparency

by angelheadedhipster



Category: Angels in America - Kushner
Genre: 3Y, Future Fic, M/M, a year late, park benches, some thoughts, they never did meet in the play really, written for my number one favorite writing partner fic lifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:38:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3800584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheadedhipster/pseuds/angelheadedhipster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few years later, a meeting in the park.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Apparent Transparency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nitpickyabouttrains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitpickyabouttrains/gifts).



_A few years later._

Joe is eating a hot dog, because he likes hot dogs, even now. He is sitting on a bench near the courthouse and not thinking about anything. Which is nice; its the first time in a long while that he’s been able to do that.

He doesn’t even really notice the man with the long blond hair and the glasses walking by, not really. Maybe in a vague “oh, he’s cute” kind of way, but he’s not really looking at him until the man stops, abruptly.

“Oh,” says the blond man, and he’s staring at Joe. Joe looks back, unsure what to make of this moment. Is he being hit on? Has the man seen a ghost?

He _is_ cute though.

The man is staring so intently at Joe that Joe starts to feel uncomfortable, but it’s exciting, his skin tingling in a good way. He stops eating and shifts on the bench, acting as if he’s moving over without actually really moving.

“Do you...do you want to sit?” Joe asks, and gestures with the hand holding the hot dog.

The man smiles - and it’s a gorgeous smile, it makes his whole face look lighter, sexier - and he sits down. He’s still smiling, as if there’s some secret joke, something only he knows. Joe runs his eyes over him, over the scarf and the glasses, the big billowing coat. Everything is very expensive looking, and old, but in a classy way.

“Hot dog?” Joe says, because he really can’t think of anything else.

The other man’s smile widens, and he almost laughs. He must be hitting on Joe, right? It’s a strange method of flirtation, but anyone with those dimples can flirt however he likes, in Joe’s opinion.

“No, thank you,” says the other man. “Just the smell of those things...urgh,” and he shudders.

Joe smiles, slowly, in what he knows is a knowing way. “Smell,” he says. “Know what a smell is? The molecules of what you’re smelling.” It’s a little fast to be hitting on this guy he just met, but the man is really attractive and he just keeps staring at him, and why not go for it? It’s a sunny day and Joe has a hot dog. “Little molecules, going into your nose, your mind…” and he takes a bite of his hot dog, for emphasis.

The man is looking at him now, and passes through a whole series of facial expressions before saying, “He used that on you, too?”

“Who?” says Joe. Now he’s not sure he’s being hit on, at all, and is mostly just confused. “Used what?”

A hand is offered, and that same sly grin. Joe reaches out to shake back without even thinking, so he’s clasping the proffered hand as the man says, “Prior. Prior Walter.”

Joe jumps as if Prior’s hand is burning.

“I, uh.” And then he says, because he knows to be polite. “Joe. Joe Pitt. But you already…”

“I know,” says Prior, and that sly smile is back, and now Joe gets it. “Sorry,” says Prior, though he is clearly not sorry at all.

“Well,” says Joe, and he sits back in his space, actually moving over now, and eats some more of his hot dog.

There is a moment of silence, the birds in the park chirping, Joe swallowing the bite of meat and goo and trying to figure out what is supposed to happen now.

“How...how are you?” he asks, finally.

“Alive,” says Prior, but not in a dismissive way. It’s a fact.

Joe nods. “That good. I'm...I'm actually glad. “

Prior smiles again, instead of answering, but it feels friendlier. What is there to say, anyway? They seem to have skipped past all the usual conversations people have when they meet for the first time.

“How about you?” says Prior.

“I’ve stopped waiting,” says Joe, and it comes out before he thinks about whether it’s an answer at all.

“For what?”

Joe shrugs, and finishes up his hot dog. “There’s nothing tying me down, now. I might float away.”

Prior nods, and he looks out at the sky, at the sun. It’s peaceful. It’s nice to be there.

“Did you and Louis”- it still hurts, to say that name, somewhere in his solar plexus - “did you ever…” Joe trails off. He’s not sure why he asked this question, he doesn’t even want an answer.

“Get back together?” says Prior. He’s not looking at Joe now, he’s looking at the grass in front of him. “No.” A pause. “When someone does that...There's a carelessness to Louis. A weakness. He bends too easily.”

“And creatively,” Joe says, without thinking.

There’s a pause, and Joe feels like the world’s biggest asshole, that was totally over the line. But then Prior laughs. A real laugh, his teeth showing, and looks over at Joe out of the corner of his eye.

There is in the air the possibility that they might like each other, against all odds.

Joe’s thoughts are drifting now, remember that time, when he was with Louis. And Harper, and his mother. And Roy, god, Roy. So much he didn’t know, still doesn’t really know. Doesn’t want to know.

“You were always in the corner of my eye,” he says now, to Prior. “The thing to be scared of. A crow, a shadow. A reminder of the...the disease….”

Prior was frowning now, but not at Joe. At the situation.

“You were scared of me?” Prior asks. “I was scared of you, for sure.”

Joe shakes his head. “It seems stupid now, for sure. I was never scared of you, more of what you could be. What you meant...If Louis” - that pain again - “had touched you, and you had the disease, and then he was touching me…”

“And in touching you, touches all of earth,” Prior says, looking at the sky.

“What?” Joe says.

“Something someone said to me,” Prior says, and then there’s silence. Comfortable silence, sure, but mostly there is nothing left to say.

“I never wanted to like you,” Prior says, but he’s smiling.

“But you do?” Joe asks. He’s not sure what that means. A good thing? A bad thing?

“I could,” says Prior. “I guess that was the ultimate narcissism, though - I wanted to be so much better than you. Irreplaceable.”

Joe snorts.

“I know,” Prior says, “but there we go.”

“So, are we…” Joe isn’t sure what happens next, with any of this.

“Friends?” Prior looks down at him, sideways, out of the corner of his glasses. “I don’t know if that’s really a…”

“Yeah, I, I don’t-” Joe is thinking of all the possible ways that could be terrible.

“Maybe not,” says Prior, and he chuckles. He shifts on the bench. He could go, or Joe could go. Joe realizes he doesn’t really want to go.

“Untethered,” Prior says, and its not connected to anything they’ve been saying, but it is.

He stands to leave.

“Nice to meet you,” says Prior. “Or…”

“Yeah, likewise,” Joe says.

Prior smiles at him, and walks off. He has a nice ass. The sun keeps shining.


End file.
